Pam Porter, a long time widow, at 50-something attempts to realize a life-long ambition of being a reporter for a newspaper. The opportunity comes when she finds a dead body during her pursuit of advertising for the local daily. She finds that her ambition triggers fear in her two adult children, a former lover and close friends, who all warn her away from possible danger to her life. She grapples with her choice of chasing a dream and her obligations to her children especially.The building where the fictitional murder occurs is very real and appears on the cover of the book. The location is Pineville, a vignette of Texarkana, Arkansas/Texas where the author lived a major part of her life.